Comedic essays on ship life and life in general from Jeff "The Fun Dude" Shaw, comedy club manager for a really fun cruise line that rhymes with "Barnival." Enrich your existence with sage observations from a middle-aged man who sleeps in bunk beds. (JTFD's humorous opinions are his own, exaggerated for comedic effect, and intended to insult neither the company he loves nor the loyal customers who make his job so much fun. In other words: If you think Jeff's a dick, don't double-click!)

Tag Archives: standup comedy blog

I’m engaged to a beautiful and intelligent Croatian woman with whom I argue a lot. When people ask us how we met, we tell them it was love at first fight.

And, boy, how we fight. If we lived in Israel, Israelis and Palestinians alike would be knocking on our door, shouting, “Give it a rest already!”

Our latest fight was particularly bad. But, like most of our fights, I have no idea what it was about or how it got started. All I know is Chris Brown called me the next day and said, “N****, you better apologize.”

Some people believe that constant fighting means you’re in the wrong relationship. Not me. Željka and I don’t fight because we’re in a bad relationship; we fight because we’re in a relationship. A relationship without fighting is like a Vin Diesel movie without car chases: a lot less noisy but nowhere near as fun.

Our constant fighting doesn’t say we’re wrong for each other. It says we both have poor relationship skills. It says we’re both immature, ego driven and hot-tempered. It says we have anger issues, intimacy issues and trust issues. It says we’re bad listeners, blamers and excuse makers. We’re not wrong for each other so much as we’re perfect for “Dr. Phil.”

Most people are too quick to break up with somebody just because the relationship gets a little rocky:

“I can’t believe you just buried an ax in my head! I want a divorce!”

“Oh, stop being so dramatic—we’ve got health insurance! How about a little makeup sex?!”

“Not tonight—I’ve got a headache!”

Relationships aren’t meant to make you happy; they’re meant to give you somebody to be unhappy with:

“I hate you.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, I hate you.”

“Wanna watch a movie?”

“Sure, as long as it’s not some stupid rom-com with a happy ending.”

Happiness is your own responsibility. If you can’t be happy by yourself, stop thinking you can be happy with somebody else:

“I’m fat, I’m stupid and I’m unattractive. But if I were in a relationship, then I would be happy.

“Because then the only thing missing in my life would the nagging suspicion that my significant other is cheating on me with somebody thinner, smarter and more attractive.

“So if I could replace my insecurity and self-loathing with a constant fear of betrayal and abandonment —then, I would be happy.”

Companionship is its own reward. I don’t expect Željka to make me happy; I expect her to make me a sandwich. And Željka doesn’t expect me to make her happy; she expects me to make the bed. Her cooking for me shows she loves me and my doing little chores for her shows I love her. All that the constant fighting shows is that we better not break up, because nobody else would put up with us.

Why are Željka and I still together after four years even though we drive each other crazy? Because we both realize that trying to find a partner who doesn’t drive you crazy is like trying to find a dog that doesn’t bark. If you don’t like barking, don’t get a dog. If you don’t like bitching, don’t get a you-know-what.

Many men make the mistake of thinking that if his wife or girlfriend is constantly busting his nuggets, she’s the wrong woman for him. Guys, you shouldn’t worry about your woman busting your nuggets, because busting your nuggets is the number one sign that she really loves you. What you should be worried about is the woman who never busts your nuggets, who never gets angry, who never loses her temper. Show me a woman who doesn’t do everything she can to make you miserable when you’re awake and I’ll show you a woman who’ll murder you when you’re asleep.

The only way to be in a happier relationship is to become a happier person. And the only way to become a happier person is to become a better person. And the only way to become a better person is to develop better life skills, better communication skills, better listening skills and better relationship skills. Reading books helps. Going to counseling helps. Watching “Dr. Phil” helps. Eating an entire carton of mint chocolate chip ice cream with the lights out really helps.

But one thing that doesn’t help you become a better person is bailing on a relationship just because the other person is a gigantic pain in the butt. That’s why I’ve never understood divorce. Ask any married man if he would take a bullet for his wife and he’ll say Yes without hesitation. But as soon as his wife becomes a certified nugget busting machine, he’ll start chasing anything in a skirt. So let me get this straight: You’re willing to take a bullet for your woman but you’re not willing to take forty to fifty years of incessant bickering, quarreling, squabbling, yelling, screaming and standing half-naked on the front lawn at 4:00am, putting your personal belongings out with a fire extinguisher?

Wussy!

You’re the one who bought the engagement ring. You’re the one who proposed. You’re the one who said “I do”—until death do you part. So don’t abandon the ship now just because the seas are a little stormy. It’s not love unless the neighbors call 911 and you wind up on “Cops,” being pushed into the back of a squad car in your boxer shorts and wife-beater T-shirt while she stands on the porch of the double-wide, sobbing, “He’s a good man, officer—he didn’t mean me to bury that ax in my head. Don’t arrest him–we got health insurance….”

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go. Željka just finished reading this horse crap and I’ve got some fighting to do.

If there’s one thing cruise ship guests hate it’s waiting in line to see a free comedy show. It fact, some guests get so mad they look like they want to hit me. Only reason they don’t is the line for beating me up is usually longer than the line for the show.

In all fairness, I can see why people on vacation wouldn’t want to wait ten minutes to see a forty-minute comedy show. These are the same people who’ll wait in a three-hour line at Six Flags for a two-minute roller coaster ride. The same people who’ll camp out on Canal Street in New Orleans at nine in the morning for a Mardi Gras parade that doesn’t start till noon and won’t reach them until four in the afternoon. The same people who’ll sleep outside an Apple Store all weekend just to buy the new iPhone even though they still haven’t figured out how to use their previous iPhone. The same people who’ll, on the first night of the cruise, spend forty-five minutes in a Free Liquor Tasting line that circles the lobby of the ship just so they can down a thimble-sized sample of Baily’s Irish Cream. So, yes, I can see why waiting ten minutes for a professional comedy show would be too much suffering for their fallen arches to endure.

There’s something about lines (or “queues,” if you’re British) that brings out the worst in people. On a nightly basis I observe grown adults cut the line, save spots for friends, nit-pick about who was standing where, push and shove, scream and shout, and then become verbally abusive (or “get all Parliamentary,” if you’re British) with me or my assistants when confronted about their behavior. Other guests will refuse to join the line altogether and try to start their own line at the exit of the comedy club, refusing to move as they’re trampled by a stampede of 600 departing guests in search of free pizza and ice cream. It’s nights like that that make me wish there were more icebergs in the Caribbean.

Some of my superiors believe that turning a blind eye to such childish behavior falls under the heading of Good Customer Service. I do not. I believe that when passengers pay for a cruise they are paying to travel on the ship, paying to sleep on the ship, paying to eat on the ship, and paying to enjoy the free live entertainment offered on the ship. They are not paying for the right to interfere with our operation, supplant our policies with their own, defy or disrespect our team members or infringe upon the fun of their fellow guests through rude, selfish or discourteous behavior. For that we charge extra.

In my opinion, passengers are called “guests” for a reason: the ship is our home and they are just visiting. In my cruise line’s opinion, however, passengers should be considered “part of the family.” Fine. But if you ask me, that’s even more of a reason for us to call guests on their crap. I’d love to see our more problematic passengers try to pull the same shenanigans in the home of a close relative and see what happens. Try telling their Aunt Clara and Uncle Eugene how to run their household, spill food on their furniture, leave dirty dishes on their stairs, make noise at all hours of the night outside their bedroom door and speak rudely or disrespectfully to them or their cousins and they’ll find themselves at a Motel 6 faster than they can say, “It may be your house but it’s my vacation.”

I love my job and I love my ship. I also love the vast majority of guests who cruise with us week after week. So, please come sail with us soon. I’ll do my part to make sure you have the best cruise ever. But, to echo something we’ve all heard our fathers say a million times while growing up: If you cruise under my roof, you cruise under my rules.

My least favorite part of being our ship’s comedy club manager is turning over the showroom between shows. A hard partying crowd of 600 people can leave enough empty beer bottles and cocktail glasses in their wake to make the Punchliner look like Motley Crϋe’s tour bus. So in order to clean the room in ten minutes or less—and to ensure that guests waiting in line for the next show can get good seats without having to shove a fellow guest overboard—we ask the audience to exit after every performance. Not surprisingly, guests are less than thrilled by this policy, because it forces them to do two activities cruise ship passengers are notoriously reluctant to engage in: following instructions and leaving the sitting position. But I find that if I attach a free drink coupon to some fishing line I can usually coax them all out eventually.

I’ve been told I should look at it at from a guest’s point of view. And I have. Their point of view is that they have the right to ignore the rules because they “paid good money to be here.” They paid good money to fill up their gas tank—does that mean they can run a red light? They paid good money to finish their basement—does that mean they can use it as a meth lab? They paid good money for their cellphone—does that mean they can take a photo of their “junk,” email it to unsuspecting women, lose their spot in Congress and then run for mayor of a major metropolitan city? (OK, bad example.)

Not every guest gives me a hard time about our policy, but those who do make my job way harder than it needs to be. These people have been on the ship less than 24 hours and yet suddenly they’re experts in running a comedy club: “I have to leave now that the show is over and people are already lining up outside for the next one and your staff needs to clean up and reset the showroom in less than ten minutes? That makes no sense!”

“Of course that makes no sense to you,” I feel like screaming back, “You’ve never set foot in our club before! But maybe if you were an experienced crowd control expert who possessed firsthand knowledge of the type of traffic flow problems our carefully considered and thoroughly tested policies and procedures have been designed to prevent, instead of a vacationer seeing live stand-up for the first time, perhaps you wouldn’t be so befuddled. You may have paid to be here but I get paid to be here, so whaddya say you keep drinking yourself blind and I’ll keep doing my job?”

I’ve never understood “that makes no sense” as a guest’s go-to objection to our shipboard policies. Of course it makes no sense: you haven’t received the same training that we have nor are you privy to the same information we are. If you were to take a trip to Dick’s Sporting Goods, I’m sure that the machine that drills holes in the bowling balls would baffle the bejesus out of you. But to the guy who has been trained to drill the holes in bowling balls, the ball hole drilling machine makes perfect sense. And maybe if he were to drill a couple of holes into your skull, it would drain enough “stupid juice” out of your noggin so that from now on you’ll no longer demand that things make sense to you immediately and instead learn how to ask intelligent questions that might lead to you having a wider frame of reference, which will lead to better understanding of our polices, which will lead to you realizing that we have your and your fellow guests’ best interests at heart and have no intention of inconveniencing you or ruining your vacation, so please stop thinking that paying for a cruise makes you a senior vice president of the cruise line.

Similarly, when I board an airplane, none of the dials or levers in the cockpit makes sense to me. Difference is, the fact that those dials and levers make no sense to me makes perfect sense to me–because I’m not a pilot! But I’m pretty sure that if I took flying lessons for a number of years, spent thousands of hours in the air before finally obtaining my commercial pilot’s license, all that technology in the cockpit would one day make perfect sense to me. I’m also pretty sure I’d be even less tolerant of idiots that I am now:

“I can’t believe we have to wait an extra twenty minutes before takeoff just because one of the engines fell off the plane—that makes no sense!”

Like this:

I saw this human interest story on TV about a born-again Christian in his 20’s who found a job at a copy center right after he found God. “Jesus helped me get a job,” the kid said, tearfully. (Which employment agency did he go through—Son of Manpower?)

Switching channels, I stumbled across some vapid teen comedy in which one kid was being razzed by his schoolmates for working at his father’s car dealership after school. “Daddy’s Boy,” they called him. The movie had a happy ending, though. His daddy beat up their daddies.

So why is it that when your dad helps you get a job it’s called nepotism, yet when God helps you get a job it’s called faith? Your old man may have connections, but the Lord can work miracles. That’s why “It’s a miracle you got hired” is rarely meant as a compliment.

I’m not saying you should brag if Pops pulls some strings for you. I’m saying you shouldn’t brag if God Almighty, Lord and Master of the Entire Freaking Universe pulls some strings for you. Bragging that God got you a job is like bragging that Wolfgang Puck poured the milk for your cereal. Impressive, sure, but why didn’t you just do it yourself?

I was taught that God helps those who help themselves. That’s why “God got me a job” doesn’t impress me. What would have impressed me is if the kid had said, “The Lord has blessed me with a strong body and a healthy mind, so I decided it was time to shut off the X-Box, get off the couch, and find a job!” That way, his parents’ prayers would have been answered instead.

But for me, asking God to take a break from answering prayers in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip just to help you not botch an interview for minimum-wage employment is silly and arrogant. And so what if God got you a job at Kinko’s? He made Justin Bieber a millionaire! (On second thought, that was more likely the work of God’s downstairs neighbor.)

And so what if you have faith in the Lord? You’re supposed to. That’s what good Christians do. Now, how about having a little faith in yourself? Instead of praying you get a certain job, how about working hard, studying hard, paying your dues, writing a knockout resume, preparing for the interview, showing up energized and looking sharp, and then earning the job by proving you’re the best person for the job. Then, after you get the job, you can pray that your boss’s dad didn’t get him his.

Faith in God brings inner peace and happiness to a lot of folks whose lives might otherwise feel empty and hopeless, so I can understand why good Christians are so prone to babbling endlessly about their faith. Whenever I have coffee and beignets at Café du Monde in the French Quarter of New Orleans, you can’t get me to shut up about it. And although I haven’t been to church in a long time, I’m guessing that a caffeine and sugar buzz has nothing on the Holy Spirit.

So although I understand it’s the responsibility of every good Christian to “testify,” what I don’t understand is why anyone with an ounce of self-respect wouldn’t feel ashamed to publicly credit the most powerful being known to man for helping him do things any normal, responsible human being should be able to accomplish on his own. Thanking God for curing your cancer? Check. Thanking God for keeping your children safe? Check. Thanking God that the utility company didn’t shut your lights off? Don’t thank God—thank the US Postal Service for delivering your check on time even though you waited until halfway through your five-day grace period to mail it in. (Then again, if the US Postal Service delivered your payment on time, then that is definitely a miracle—so go ahead and thank God after all.)

Yes, God does want you to find gainful employment so you can take care of yourself and your loved ones. But if you want God’s help finding a job, God has already given it to you: God created the person who created the person who created the person who created the person who created Linked-In. So log on, create an account, upload your résumé, and shut the hell up, for God’s sake!

Although it’s important to have a good relationship with God and have faith in the plan he has mapped out for you, it’s not going to hurt you to fight your own battles every once in a while. If God wanted to be your answer to everything he wouldn’t have created the person who created the person who created the person who created the person who created Google. To draw a comparison, although most of us need and crave the support of our parents and probably wouldn’t be where we are today without that love and support from our parents, there comes a time when we all have to stop having our parents support us, stop having our parents fight our battles for us and stop having our parents bail us out of trouble.

For me, that time will be next year on my 50th birthday.

Faith is not hard to understand. You love your Heavenly Father, your Heavenly Father loves you, and your Heavenly Father can fix anything because he is a master of space and time. That’s easy for me to relate to because I love my earthly father, my earthly father loves me, and my earthly father can fix anything because he has a Craftsman toolbox. And, if I were to get a flat tire and my earthly father offered to change it for me, I would love my earthly father even more, believe in him even more and be even more grateful that he is in my life. What I wouldn’t do is tell everyone I know that I let my 73-year-old daddy change a tire for me.

Meaning, just because I love my dad, believe in my dad and receive strength from my dad doesn’t mean I still expect him to solve my problems for me or that I’m going to run crying to him every time something goes wrong in my life.

The last time I told a Wal-Mart cashier to “have a nice day,” she responded with “God bless you.” Although I’m not religious, I smiled and said thank-you. My debit card wasn’t declined, so I figured her blessing had worked.

Some might say it’s bad manners for a Christian to say “God bless you” to a nonbeliever. Personally, I think it’s worse manners to say “Have a nice day” to a cashier at Wal-Mart. That’s like saying, “Enjoy the Caribbean” to a detainee at Guantanamo Bay.

I have one friend who gets all worked up whenever I say “God bless you” after he sneezes:

“Achoo!”

“God bless you.”

“Dude, how many times do I have to tell you that ‘God bless you’ drives me nuts? Please use gesundheit instead.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not a Christian, that’s why.”

“You’re not German either, yet you want me to say gesundheit?”

“Yeah, well, I’m against organized religion, not Germany.

“OK then, I won’t say ‘God bless you.’”

“Achoo!”

“Hitler bless you.”

But why should a Christian consider my religious beliefs before saying “God bless you,” anyway? Do I consider a Wal-Mart cashier’s secular beliefs before saying “Have a nice day”? What if she’s a pessimist? Telling her to have a nice day could come off as arrogant or controlling. (And she gets enough of that already from “Skippy,” her 19-year-old, GED-toting supervisor.) Or what if she’s clinically depressed? Telling a depressed person to have a nice day when she’s emotionally incapable of having a nice day will not only ruin her day; it might also deepen her depression. So maybe I should say something neutral instead, such as “Thank-you for your service” or “I hope you get hired at Target.”

Although I’m no fan of organized religion, I’ve never understood why atheists get so bent out of shape when a good Christian says, “God bless you.” As a disillusioned Catholic, I don’t go to mass, I don’t pray much, and I certainly don’t read the Bible, so, please, bless me all you want. If you’re not going to bless an emotionally stunted sinner who tells dookie jokes for a living, who are you going to bless?

It doesn’t even have to be a blessing from “God” God. You can say “Allah bless you,” “Vishnu bless you,” or “Ron L. Hubbard bless you,” for all I care. I may not be a practicing Christian, but I am a practicing liberal, so I’ll take all the entitlements I can get, including blessings from your or anyone’s God, whether He exists or not. Being healthy doesn’t stop me from needing health insurance so why should being skeptical keep me from needing faith insurance? The way I look at it, every time a religious person of any faith says “God bless you” to me, it’s Obamacare for the soul.

Besides, the fact that I’m not a practicing Christian is precisely why I don’t mind “God bless you” as a greeting. Perhaps if I were a practicing Christian, maybe then I would mind:

FELLOW CHRISTIAN:

God bless you, brother.

ME:

What? You don’t think I have a good enough relationship with God myself that I need your help to attain His blessing? Me and the Lord are like are like this, pal—so go to Hell. And while you’re down there, be sure to say gesundheit when Hitler sneezes. “God bless you” drives him nuts.

So instead of getting angry when Christians say “God bless you,” I take it as the kind gesture is was meant to be and move on. Believe me, with a personality like mine, I get told “Screw you” so often that “God bless you” is a nice change of pace.

Capital punishment is one of the most hotly debated and polarizing issues in America. For example, when Tennessee decided to bring back the electric chair earlier this year, liberal Tennesseans argued this might increase the number of innocent people on death row, whereas conservative Tennesseans argued this might increase their electric bills.

Meanwhile, Oklahoma wants to abolish lethal injection because it’s not covered by Obamacare.

Oklahoma botched an execution by lethal injection several months ago. They used the wrong chemicals so it took about an hour to kill the guy. (In fact, while he waited, he had a new pair of glasses made at Lens Crafters.) But, although the media made a big deal out of it, I don’t think the guy they were executing really minded all that much:

“No, really, take all the time you need. I’ve got nothing planned for the rest of the day. If you want, we can break for lunch and try this again in a couple of decades….”

The kicker is that the guy never got his last meal. Apparently, he requested steak with A-1 Sauce, shrimp salad, a baked potato and dessert. But since that meal would have cost more than $15, his request was denied. Call me a bleeding heart, but if we, as a society, are going to end the life of a fellow member of society, the least we can do is send an intern over to Applebee’s for some takeout. How better to help a convicted murderer learn the error of his ways than by showing him how wonderful life can be for $8.99 on Tuesdays and Thursdays? One basket of all-you-can-eat riblets before dying and even the most cold-blooded psychopath will realize that killing is a no-no.

One thing I’ve learned is that it’s totally useless to debate the death penalty with friends who support capital punishment. No matter what you say, they always have a knee-jerk response locked and loaded:

“You know, the death penalty, both in the U.S. and around the world, is discriminatory and is used disproportionately against the poor, minorities and members of racial, ethnic and religious communities. Since humans are fallible, the risk of executing the innocent can never be eliminated.”

“It’s right there in the Bible: ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ Kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out!”

“Furthermore, the astronomical costs associated with putting a person on death row – including criminal investigations, lengthy trials and appeals – are leading many states to re-evaluate and re-consider having this flawed and unjust system on the books.”

“If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime!”

“Since 1973, over 130 people have been released from death rows throughout the country due to evidence of their wrongful convictions. In 2003 alone, 10 wrongfully convicted defendants were released from death row.”

“Yeah, well, I just saved a ton of money on my car insurance!”

When it comes to the death penalty, I consider myself both a conservative and a liberal: I’m for the electric chair but only if it’s solar powered.

I’m kidding. Truth be told, I’m no fan of the death penalty; because, the longer I live and work on a cruise ship, the more I want to kill somebody.

They say that the death penalty is a deterrent to murder. But if anything should be a deterrent to murder it’s plain ol’ prison. In prison, you’re forced to go “number two” in the middle of a tiny cell, on that metal prison toilet, with no privacy whatsoever. I don’t care how badly you want somebody dead; all it should take to stop you from pulling the trigger is to picture yourself dropping a deuce with a big, bald Aryan ape with a dragon tattooed to his head staring you down as you nervously try to wipe. Anytime you find yourself compelled to act-out some ultra-violent adolescent, woe-is-me revenge fantasy, just dial up that bowel-tightening scenario in your noggin and you’ll immediately switch to envisioning a better tomorrow, wherein you buy the whole world a Coke and teach it to sing in perfect harmony.

Okay, let’s say the death penalty can deter premeditated murder. But then what about crimes of passion? Who’s thinking of the death penalty in the heat of the moment?:

“Yo, play-a! You stole my cocaine, you burned down my drug lab, and you blew up my Escalade!” I should kill you, but I don’t want Al Sharpton to be disappointed in me when they fry me like a catfish at the church social!””

For those of you that think the preceding joke is racist because I made the criminal’s dialogue read like some clichéd African-American stereotype, allow me to rewrite the passage, this time making him sound like some clichéd white-trash stereotype:

“Hey, boy! You stole my moonshine, you burned down my still, and you blew up my El Camino! I should kill you, but I don’t want Nancy Grace to say mean stuff about me after they fry me like a funnel cake at the state fair!”

While we’re at it, let’s piss off some Hispanic-Americans:

“Yo, Holmes! You stole my Chiclets, you burned down my taco stand and you blew up my donkey! I should kill you, but I don’t want George Lopez to make bad jokes about me after they fry me like a churro at a flea market!”

And let’s not forget Gay-Americans:

”You bad boy! You stole my Lady Ga-Ga CD’s, you burned down my walk-in-closet shrine to Neil Patrick Harris, and you blew up my powder-blue Prius. I should kill you but I don’t want to end up on death row with a bunch of sweaty, horny men. On second thought, maybe I WILL kill you—BANG-BANG!”

The reason why I think capital punishment doesn’t deter murder is that murder doesn’t seem to deter crappy human behavior. The world is filled with hair-triggered psychopaths who could kill us in a blink of an eye, yet we continue to flip off others in traffic, steal parking spots at the mall, cut in line at the supermarket, talk and text in movie theaters, stiff waiters, cheat on lovers, and angrily tell panhandlers to “get a job!”

“Excuse me, brother, can you spare some change for something to eat?”

“Get a job, you lazy bum.”

“Careful—I could have a gun.”

“Yeah, well, if you can afford a gun, then you can afford a sandwich.”

Can you imagine how cool it would be if people stopped treating others like crap just because they were afraid to be murdered?

“Harold, I can’t believe you just tipped our waiter twenty percent for a change.”

“Beats getting stabbed in the neck with a fork, sweetheart.”

“Oh, come now, Harold. That nice young man would never do something like that. Who wants to spend the rest of his life pooping on a prison toilet?”

Although I’m a meat eater, I’m neither a gun owner nor a hunter. I’m not against killing defenseless animals; I’m against getting up at 5:00 am to do it:

“Hey, Jeff—how about we get up at the crack of dawn, freeze our butts off and shoot at some deer?”

“I’ve got a better idea: How about you leave me an assault rifle with a high-capacity magazine and I’ll sleep till noon, brew some coffee, scarf some Crunch Berries and then get all “Scarface” on the neighbor’s poodle that’ll be yapping its damn head off all morning?”

And although I love my country, I’m embarrassed by our incessant, ridiculous quarreling over gun laws and same-sex unions. America is so behind the times. There isn’t one licensed dentist in all of Great Britain and yet their Parliament is progressive enough to make gun ownership difficult (Wanna kill somebody? Start a soccer riot!) and gay marriage legal. (God save the queens!)

Two of the most polarizing issues in American politics are gun rights and gay rights. Gun nuts won’t let you have their gun until you “pry it from their cold dead fingers,” and I’m pretty sure gay men feel the same way about something else.

I feel about gay rights the same way I feel about gun rights: Do what you want; just don’t point that thing at me. I have no desire to own a gun and I have no desire to have sex with a man. I would, however, buy a gun if that’s what it takes to keep me from having sex with a man.

I just wish that flag-waving fans of the Second Amendment would show a little more concern for the Constitutional rights of all Americans:

“America is the land of freedom! Except for Muslims and butt pirates! Nobody’s gonna tell me how to live my life—hey, fella, don’t you dare marry that fella! Nobody’s going to tell me what god to pray to—hey, Akbar, don’t you dare build that mosque next to my church! Nobody’s gonna tell my woman how she can dress—hey, babe, lose the burka so I can see some boobies!”

If you’re a gun-toting patriot who wants to fight for your rights, then stand up and fight. But then, when you’re done, sit down and shut up while glitter-throwing Americans fight for their rights. You can’t be both for gun rights and against gay rights. The Second Amendment or Proposition 8—pick one and stick the other up your butt. (Don’t worry, that won’t make you gay.)

But, Jeff, the thought of two men having sex is disgusting.

Then stop thinking about it! Just because you find gay sex disgusting doesn’t mean you have the right to stop same-sex couples from getting married. Hell, my fiancée finds straight sex with me disgusting and yet we’re still allowed to marry.

Just because I’m for gay marriage doesn’t mean I enjoy the company of gay people. In fact, I find most homosexuals rather annoying. Gay men annoy me because I sound gayer than they do, and gay women annoy me because I look gayer than they do.

And just because I don’t have the right to discriminate against or harass my fellow Americans based on their sexual preferences doesn’t mean I can’t exercise my First Amendment rights to joke about how much flamboyantly gay people irritate the hell out of me. I can say what I want just as long as I don’t use homophobic slurs, such as “homo,” “queer” or “Clay Aiken.”

For example, the other day, a gay colleague of mine, whom I both like and respect, comes sliding down the banister of a crew area staircase, lands at my feet, and then proceeds to swish around, snap his fingers, do little showgirl kicks and sing:

It’s raining men / It’s raining men / Hallelujah / It’s raining men

I hate it when my gay friends act like that around me. Because, for the rest of the day, I found myself swishing around, snapping my fingers, doing little showgirl kicks, and singing:

It’s raining men / It’s raining men / Hallelujah / It’s raining men

Hey—gay or straight, a catchy number is a catchy number.

America is a great country. But I think we could be even greater. The thing that’s supposed to be so great about America is we’re supposed to be able to criticize our country without the fear of being punished for our opinions. Yet, the more a patriotic a person claims to be, the angrier he becomes when you exercise your freedom of speech as an American. Of course, the less somebody respects your opinions, the more pointless it is to argue with him:

“America’s the greatest country in the world! Yee haw!”

“Actually, we lag behind in many areas, such as education, healthcare and treatment of our war veterans. In fact, Canada is ahead of us in all three.”

“Well, if you don’t like it here, then why don’t you move to Canada?”

“Because I’m a homophobic, gun-toting American – they don’t want me!”

I hate to sound like a broken record but if gun nuts think that freedom is what makes America so great and so different, then why don’t they think it’s great when their fellow Americans exercise their freedom to be different? I would love to see that, wouldn’t you?

“Hey, Timmy. Whaddya say we get liquored up and go on down to that Gay Pride parade with our shotguns?”

“Hell yeah, Bobby. We can blast the hell out of anyone who threatens those glitter-throwing Nancy boys with physical harm while they’re marching up and down Main Street in defense of their civil liberties as tax-paying Americans.”

“True dat, Timmy. This is America; we have to be tolerant of one another or else we’re no better than Russia. Vladimir Putin banned homosexuals from the Winter Olympics and he’s a socialist, right?”

“Damn right, Bobby. And if everyone on the right in this country is so against socialism, and Vladimir Putin is a homophobic socialist, that means anyone who’s against civil rights for gay people is not only a homophobe but also a dog-gone socialist. So if socialism is wrong, then so is homophobia in the so-called ‘Land of the Free’.”

“Know what, Timmy? I get turned on when you start talking all logical and stuff and, you know, showing love and respect for your fellow human beings just like it says in the Bible even if their values and lifestyle choices differ from your own. Hell, Timmy, maybe you and I should try being homosexuals sometime.”

“Aw, shucks, Bobby, I ain’t no butt ranger. But if it’ll help win the war against socialism, hell, I guess I can polish a knob or two for America—yee-haw!”

Why do opponents of gay marriage always seem so obsessed with gay behavior? It’s a little homoerotic, if you ask me. For example, the other, day a straight man wearing a leather vest with both an American flag and an NRA patch on it told me that he was against same-sex marriage because it’s a sin against nature (much like the grey, over-60 pony tail he was sporting). He then started playing one of those hypothetical question games with me:

“Tell me, Fun Dude,” he said. “If a gay millionaire offered you a million dollars—in cash, tax free—to sleep with him, would you do it?”